Indigenous peoples of New Brunswick

The Indigenous peoples of New Brunswick are the inhabitants of the Canadian maritime province of New Brunswick whose descendants lived there before the arrival of European settlers. The Canadian government considers Indigenous peoples to be members of the First Nations, the Métis, and the Inuit. The Métis are mixed-race descendants of First Nations people and Europeans, while the Inuit are Indigenous residents of the northernmost regions of North America.

According to New Brunswick, Canada, in December 2023, 17,510 inhabitants of New Brunswick were Indigenous, with 10,098 living on reservations and 7,412 living off reservations. Two identities make up the overwhelming majority of First Nations people: the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet. Together they combine for more than 98 percent of the First Nations population of New Brunswick.

Demographics

New Brunswick is the largest of Canada's three Atlantic provinces, a region known as the Maritimes that also includes Prince Edwards Island and Nova Scotia. The 2024 population of New Brunswick was 857,381, an increase of 16,803 from 2023. It has a total area of 28,150 square miles (72,908 square kilometers). New Brunswick borders Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the south and east, and the US state of Maine to the west. It is separated from Prince Edward Island to the northeast by the Northumberland Strait. The province was named after the German duchy of Brunswick-Lunenburg, a territory with historical ties to Britain's King George III. New Brunswick, along with Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, became one of Canada's original four provinces when the British formed the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

While the soil of the river lowlands allow for some farming, more than 80 percent of the province is covered by heavy forests, providing wood for a successful lumber industry. New Brunswick's highest elevation is Mount Carleton, a 2,680-foot (817-meter) peak in the northern region of the province. High temperatures in July average 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius), and lows in January average about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (−15 degrees Celsius).

The eastern city of Moncton is the largest in New Brunswick with a 2021 population of 85,802. Saint John, on the southeastern coast, had a population of 73,611 while the provincial capital, Fredericton, had 63,116. The 2021 New Brunswick census profile reported 20,960 people as claiming First Nations status, 10,165 Métis, 685 Inuit, with the remainder claiming other Indigenous identities.

Background

Mi'kmaq and Maliseet traditions place their ancestors in the New Brunswick region more than 10,000 years ago. Archeological evidence seems to back up that time period, suggesting that ancient humans were in the area about 12,000 years ago. The earliest inhabitants of New Brunswick were hunters and fishers who migrated seasonally between their woodland hunting grounds and the coastal region. The Mi'kmaq first encountered Europeans in the sixteenth century and established a trading relationship with the foreigners. In the early seventeenth century, French explorers landed in New Brunswick and established settlements on the coast. Both the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet welcomed the newcomers and helped them survive in the harsh northern climate. The French called the region Acadia.

As the French moved inland to settle the St. Lawrence River valleys in modern-day Quebec, the Indigenous people teamed with the remaining settlers to establish a lucrative fur trade in the region. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, North America became a battleground for both French and British colonial interests. The Mi'kmaq and Maliseet originally allied with the French but signed a series of friendship treaties with the British after England won control of the New Brunswick region in 1710. France lost its remaining Canadian territories in the treaty ending the French and Indian War (1754–1763).

Two decades later, following Britain's defeat in the American Revolution (1775–1783), about 14,000 Loyalist refugees fled the American colonies and settled near Saint John. Among those were freed Black enslaved people who had pledged their loyalty to the Crown during the war. To make room for the new arrivals, many Maliseet were pushed off their traditional farming lands near the Saint John River. Despite signing loyalty treaties with the British before the war, the Mi'kmaq also lost much of their hunting land.

Like many First Nations people, the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were subjected to discriminatory policies by the British and Canadian governments that attempted to incorporate them into a European-based society. Many were relocated to reserves throughout the province, and children were forced to attend residential schools, where they were discouraged from practicing their native culture and beliefs. Political activism by First Nations groups in the late twentieth century led to apologies from the Canadian government and an effort to resolve land claim disputes brought by Indigenous groups. The Tobique First Nation, a Maliseet reserve in northwestern New Brunswick, reached a $39 million settlement with the federal government in 2016. That same year, the Mi'kmaq Elsipogtog First Nation filed a claim seeking land rights for most of the southern third of the province. The group filed the claim in an effort to stop shale gas exploration on what they maintained are ancestral lands. In 2020, the Wolastoqey Nation filed a claim seeking the rights to the St. John River, its watershed, and surrounding areas. A New Brunswick judge ruled in 2024 that Aboriginal title can be declared over privately owned land, even if they were not fighting to reclaim this land. The Indigenous peoples of New Brunswick considered this to be a major victory.

Overview

Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) listed fifteen registered First Nations communities in New Brunswick as of 2022. Nine were associated with the Mi'kmaq and six were Maliseet. The combined number of Mi'kmaq and Maliseet was 15,875, about 70 percent of the province's Indigenous population and more than 98 percent of its First Nations peoples. A small group of Passamaquoddy, a tribe that primarily resides in Maine, lived on the New Brunswick side of the Canadian border. The New Brunswick Passamaquoddy maintain their own tribal government but have not been recognized as a First Nation by Canada.

The Mi'kmaq, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy are closely related peoples that share many cultural traits. The three groups, together with the Abenaki of Quebec and Maine, formed an alliance called the Wabanaki Confederacy. Like most First Nations people, their spirituality is based on the belief in a guiding spirit that created the universe but does not intervene in the daily affairs of humans. To the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy, this spirit was called Gici Niwaskw. The mythology of all three peoples includes a cultural hero known as Glooscap, or Kluskap. Glooscap is a trickster figure who was believed to have helped create humans and shape the natural world. Some stories claim that he shot his great arrows into birch trees, releasing the first humans into the world. Mi'kmaq legend tells of how he created the founding families of the Mi'kmaq by calling forth people from sparks of flame.

Mi'kmaq

The Mi'kmaq reside predominantly in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and parts of Quebec. They call this traditional homeland Mi'gma'gi, a region divided into seven districts. The district of Siknuktuk includes much of the southeastern portion of New Brunswick. Mi'kmaq means "the people" in their native tongue. They are also called the Micmacs, Mi'kmaw, or L'nu. As of 2023, there were about 66,748 Mi'kmaq in Canada, with 9,025 living in New Brunswick. The Mi'kmaq language is part of the Algonquian language family and was spoken by an estimated 9,245 in 2021, including approximately 2,208 in New Brunswick.

When the French brought Christianity to the New World, the Mi'kmaq were the first Indigenous people of North America to accept the religion. A Mi'kmaq chief from Nova Scotia named Henri Membertou was recorded as the first person baptized in the territory of New France. In 1610, the Mi'kmaq entered into an agreement with the Vatican making the Mi'kmaq subjects of the Catholic Church. The traditional lifestyle of the Mi'kmaq was based on hunting and fishing. They were ruled by the Mi'kmaq Grand Council, which at one time made decisions affecting all Mi'gma'gi. In the twenty-first century, the council still meets on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia; however, it mostly is concerned with promoting Mi'kmaq language and culture.

Maliseet

The name Maliseet comes from a French pronunciation of a Mi'kmaq term meaning "broken talkers," a reference to the differences in the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet dialects. The Maliseet call themselves as Wolastoqiyik, or "people of the beautiful river." Their traditional homeland was along the Saint John River valley in New Brunswick and northern Maine. As of 2017, the Maliseet had a registered population in New Brunswick of 7,419. The Tobique First Nation was the largest Maliseet community with 2,366 registered members. The Saint Mary's, Woodstock, and Kingsclear reserves also had more than 1,000 registered members.

Unlike the hunting- and fishing-based society of their Mi'kmaq allies, the Maliseet primarily were an agricultural people who grew corn, squash, tobacco, and beans. They supplemented their diet during the winter months by migrating north to their hunting grounds. The Maliseet are accomplished artists known for their skill at carving, basket weaving, and quillwork, a textile weaving craft that uses softened porcupine quills. The Maliseet language is an Algonquian dialect closely related to Mi'kmaq. Maliseet is an endangered language with only a few hundred native speakers remaining in the twenty-first century. It is so similar to the Passamaquoddy language that it sometimes is referred to as Maliseet-Passamaquoddy.

Passamaquoddy

The Passamaquoddy are a fishing-based society whose traditional name, peskotomuhkati, means "spearers of pollock." They occupied the region near Passamaquoddy Bay on the modern border of the United States and Canada. When the international boundaries were defined after the War of 1812, most Passamaquoddy communities became American territory; a small group remained across the bay in St. Andrews. The group is represented by a tribal chief and council and refers to itself as the St. Croix Schoodic Band of the Passamaquoddy. It had an estimated 2020 population was about 760. While the Passamaquoddy are recognized in the United States, the Schoodic Band is not considered an official First Nation in Canada.

Métis

The first intermarriages between Europeans and Indigenous peoples occurred between the French settlers who took Mi'kmaq wives in the seventeenth century. The Métis were given Indigenous status by the Canadian government in 1982 but were not granted the same rights as the First Nations and Inuit peoples. That changed in 2016 when the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Métis and First Nations people not registered with the government would receive the same federal protections as other Indigenous peoples.

Inuit

The Inuit are an Indigenous group of about 145,000 people living in the Arctic regions of North America from Greenland to Siberia in Russia. In Canada, their traditional homeland is known as Inuit Nunangat, a region that stretches from Labrador to parts of the Northwest Territories and Yukon. Many Inuit of the Arctic regions continue to rely on traditional hunting and fishing for their livelihoods. According to the 2021 Canadian census, 70,545 people identified as Inuit. The Inuit are part of the Eskimo-Aleut language family with the inhabitants of eastern Canada speaking a dialect known as East Inuktitut. In the twenty-first century, some Inuit have left their Arctic homeland to pursue education and employment opportunities in southern Canada. Many of the 680 Inuit in New Brunswick reside in the urban centers of the province.

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